Since I did my last review of this printer in 2009, I had to throw away the R800 because of clogged head. I had tried cleaning it is several conventional ways as well as unconventional.

In the end, because of the image quality, I invested in another R800. Same brilliant quality... but head cleaning was soon required. Head cleaning automatically pumps large quantities of high cost ink through the head - sometimes the head needs 2 -3 head cleans or more to clear blockages. Eventually, I threw the second one away into the waste disposal depot.

My original rating of 9 is now severely reduced to less that 3.

I do not recommend this printer on the grounds that it would be far cheaper get your printing done by a commercial outfit than to suffer the cost of the Printer, cost of inks, the cost of spoilt paper and the cost of the pain and anguish.

Dec 27, 2012

Buster HOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Aug 13, 2006Location: United StatesPosts: 74

Review Date: May 12, 2010

Recommend? no |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 5

Pros:

Color matching was perfect right out of the box. Prints looked fantastic!

Cons:

After 6 months of use I had to continually run the cleaning utility to get clean prints.

I purchased the R800 as soon as it was available in the US. I was happy with the printer for the first 6 months. From 6 months to 18 months the printer required more and more cleaning due to clogged jets The cleaning utility uses a lot of ink! After 18 months I couldn't get a decent print and had to toss the printer. I only used Epson inks and printed at least weekly, so the head clogging wasn't from the printer sitting idle for extended periods.

I really liked the print quality of this printer. Maybe I was just unlucky.

May 12, 2010

Donald GrayOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Nov 12, 2005Location: United KingdomPosts: 2286

Review Date: Jun 22, 2009

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9

Pros:

Top grade output. Long life colours. Very quiet in operation

Cons:

COST OF INKS - last month they were £11.50 - Today they are £19 each!

Generally I am very pleased with the quality of printout

I have had the occasional blocked jets that needed extended cleaning. This is because I only do colour printing about every 1 or 2 months. I suggest that it should be used at least once a month to keep the jets clean.

The big down side is the cost of genuine Epson Inks. I do not recommend using 'compatible' generic inks - I have heard that they are not as finely filtered and could cause a blockage.... I have no proof of this, so it is up to the individual to decide on genuine or generic inks...

I just recently got a R800 on the B/S to complement my R1800. I really like having two printers that I can profile to double my print output. This printer does just as good of a job as it's bigger brother. I got mine for a song if you need a small high quality printer this is a great one to get.

Jun 15, 2009

JRKOOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Jan 12, 2009Location: United KingdomPosts: 5

Review Date: Apr 6, 2009

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9

Pros:

Seriously good prints - a cheap entry into quality printing

Cons:

Ridiculous cost of ink £1 per millilitre make petrol in the UK look reasonable! -
Love the prints but want bigger so am saving for an Epson A2+ printer like the 3880

Great printer if you don't need to go larger than A4 but once I saw the prints I thought 'Aww I wish I had a larger printer'.

I can't recommend the R800 enough but I want the larger printer....

Apr 6, 2009

RhyneOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Apr 10, 2008Location: United StatesPosts: 0

Review Date: Oct 27, 2008

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 7

Pros:

Had it for 3 yrs, no mechanical problems. Great Paper. Fast enough for my needs. I print maybe every 2 weeks and it rarely gets clogged.

Cons:

STILL HAVING A PROBLEM WITH SMUDGED BROWNS...even with the R1 profiles.

The "muddy" or smudged look it can give the browns found in my daughter's hair has been a problem since day one. It really only seems to occur when I use the flash in low light. The newer profiles helped some, but not enough. I'm probably on my last epson, which is a shame because I like the paper a lot.

I've had the R800 for over three years and have spent a few thousand dollars in consumables. Upgrading my Macs to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard prompted this review. Hopefully some notes here may help others.

Prior to Leopard, getting color balance was quite a chore, resulting in trial and error to set up profiles for quick prints from iPhoto versus output from Photoshop, plus playing around with offsets to get centered prints for 8.5x11. One hint for centering prints was to create actions in photo shop to scale to the exact output size, bypassing the driver scaling and centering.

With Leopard, the drivers seem to have changed. After some problems, I've had success with the latest drivers downloaded from Epson. Follow their troubleshooting tips to make reset the printing subsystem, then reset the "Print CD" utility by (re)starting it, and then connect and set up the printer using the Epson-supplied driver. I no longer have separate profiles for iPhoto versus Photoshop. To print to CD/DVD, make sure to select A4 or A4 manual feed, as there is no longer any hint for CD/DVD page setup.

I had a problem where the printer would not power on (after I had a problem printing a CD, I powered off and extracted the tray and lowered the bed, then the printer would not power on). A hint from the web helped - unplug the power cord and leave the printer off overnight. In the morning, the printer powered on and recovered.

For prints mounted against glass, glossy finish paper sticks to the glass and gives a mottled look. Semi-gloss paper or luster paper eliminates this problem for me.

I like 8.5x11 for inexpensive bulk paper stock and frames. But the R800 can't print 8.5x11 borderless, thus the 9 out of 10 rating. So with the R800, I often print with a wide ~1 inch border for a quick and dirty matted look, it also has the added benefit that the aspect ratio is pushed back toward 3:2, ex., print 6x9 landscape with a title at the bottom in the 8.5x11 space.

About a year ago, I finally bought a refurbished R1800 for $349 from Epson, now I can print borderless up to 13x19. I still us both printers, split between work and home.

Jul 26, 2008

Sam EdwardsOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Oct 31, 2006Location: United StatesPosts: 18

Review Date: Jun 16, 2008

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10

Pros:

Beautiful and very accurate prints.

Cons:

Difficult to set up. Expensive ink.

I've had the R800 for a couple of years. I shoot with a Canon 5D and I have to say that I am still blown away with the quality of the prints from Aperture (v2.1) on the Mac (10.5.2). Those great prints come at a price. I spend a ton of money on consumables. A full set of inks is over $100. The second is that the set up is non-trivial. It probably took 2 hours of searching the internet for a decent step by step setup guide that gets the most from the printer on a mac. You could very easily decide that good prints are impossible because there are about 20 things that you can do wrong in configuring your output and calibrating your screen.
But nobody ever promised me that photography would be easy or inexpensive. Often we are grateful for tools that can get the job done. I'm in the process of buying the big brother of this printer, the R1800 used from somebody else who gave up. I'm just glad that my prints can look as good as they do.

I have this printer now for two years. I use it almost daily. It has never let me down yet. It prints brilliant colored pictures.
i am looking to add an A3 printer soon. Thinking may be the R1800 or the R 2400.

Apr 2, 2008

AvannetOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Jun 30, 2006Location: United KingdomPosts: 226

Review Date: Aug 21, 2006

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10

Pros:

Quality, speed.

Cons:

Like's its ink.

A great printer that produces great A4 and below prints, best printer I've had.

Aug 21, 2006

StonoOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Dec 4, 2005Location: NorwayPosts: 1

Review Date: Jul 23, 2006

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: $350.00
| Rating: 10

Pros:

Very, very high printer quality! Have had lots of A4 printers (also Canon, HP, etc.), but this is simply the best.

Cons:

Epsons prices on ink are too high. BUT you can get very good non-original ink cheap (on Ebay, I use Accstation).

I print and sell a lot of photos and I highly recommend the Epson R800. I am rather sure that the people rating this printer low just have not done their homework properly (setting up the right profile, using the R800's own profile, say). I got Epson R2400 (A3+) printer too and it is indeed superb (as documented by every review), BUT if you don't take care with profiling etc., you get very bad results indeed. Moral of the story: Do your homework with profiling and use Epson paper.

Jul 23, 2006

borderlightOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Dec 6, 2004Location: United StatesPosts: 1753

Review Date: Jul 14, 2006

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 6

Pros:

Beautiful prints, colors

Cons:

Inks need to replaced all the time @ $14 per cartridge.

Prints are exceptional when the R800 is used on a regular basis, but if you use it only on occasion it will probably need the entire rundown of printer checks that will suck the inks dry even faster than printing. If you don't run the checks your prints could be way off color, have lines in them, and whatever other visual discouragement it can dish out. I swear I have had no more than 10 5x7 prints, maybe less, before I get a printer message reminder that it is time to get 5 more cartridges at $14 each.

A month ago I received a two legal notifications for a class action lawsuit against Epson. Specifically the complaints were that Epson has been rigging their printers since the year 2000 to give false readings of their ink cartridges thus creating a need to purchase more inks that aren't necessary. Since I had registered the 1270 and R800 I am entitled to $25 Cash, $25 credit at the Epson store. There are other variations, but the settlement comes out to $50 per printer. I think the lawsuit is a done deal. It will take until the fall of 2006 before all the monies are settled.

Jul 14, 2006

spolkyOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Jun 16, 2006Location: United KingdomPosts: 0

Review Date: Jun 16, 2006

Recommend? no |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 3

Pros:

Quiet, fast

Cons:

Running costs, poor gloss coverage, noticeable grain

For the money, and considering all the glowing reviews, I was expecting something spectacular. Boy, was I disappointed. This is the third Epson printer I've owned, and frankly it will be the last. From now on, I persoanlly will stick to Canon.

The ink is expensive yes, but if the prints were top-class I wouldn't mind. The relatively small droplet size of 1.5pl is supposed to produce smooth, grainless images - it doesn't. I also don't like the way the gloss is applied, as it never looks even, or for that matter very glossy. If you use it for anything other than photos then it's merely average, no better than a £30 throw-away cheapy.

I can only assume all the other reviewers have either never used another printer, or work for Epson! I'm sorry but I tell it as I see it, and this printer isn't worth the money. There are far, far better alternatives out there especially from Canon and HP. If this was a 'budget' printer costing around £100 I'd say go for it, but it's not cheap to buy or to run (ink cartridges don't last long and are costly) so my advice to anyone would be simply this: don't buy this printer.

Does go through ink cartridges but I have run as many as 200 prints a week through this printer. Not as fast as a Kodak 1400 but the image quality of the Epson is so far superior that it's worth the wait.

This is the finest printer that I have ever used. For my on-location sports photography business, it gets a work-out...two weeks ago we ran nearly 3 full boxes (100 sheet boxes) of Ilford Galerie Smooth through the printer at a horse show and it only over-heated a couple of times.

I don't think these machines were designed to be used in 95 degree heat with a dew point of 70 and a bunch of dust in the vicinity...but it still cranked out incredible images.

I have had several clients comment on the improvement in print quality from this year...color accuracy, sharpness and overall look of images. Last year I was using a Kodak 1400 and 8500 and the results are not impressive...when you do a side-by-side comparison with the R800.

The dust problem with the Kodaks was the biggest reason to switch to any other kind of printer and the yellowish cast to all images.

The R800 does go through alot of Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, Gloss Optimizer and Photo Black but but when I look at the 8 X 10's that this Epson can produce...it isn't really an issue. I just make sure that I have three of each for a weekend event and at least 3 boxes of Ilford or Epson Gloss paper.

This printer and the Canon EOS 1D Mark II seem to be perfectly matched because the color rendition and detail reproduction are simply amazing...in some instances unbelievable.

You can't go wrong with this printer.

Aug 26, 2005

shedOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Aug 17, 2005Location: United KingdomPosts: 3

Review Date: Aug 17, 2005

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10

Pros:

This is without a doubt the current (AUG 05) best A4 photo printer. The results are fantastic and very highly detailed, and the print longevity is awsome. Highly rated.

Cons:

None- super printer.

This is the best printer that I have ever used and has delivered some fantastic results. The pigment inks are a boon for print longevity and the colour accuracy out of the box was near as dammit spot on.

The level of detail afforded by the 1.5 pl ink drops is astonashing. This combined with the wide colour gamut helps produce digital files which rival and in most cases beat those from film.

This is a truly first class printer, the speed is impressive (if not as fast as Canon's- but then higher quality offsets this) and the results speak for themselves. There is minimal metamerism and bronzing is all but eliminated with the inclusion of the gloss optimiser cartridge.

The results are good on Epson paper, but I prefer using Ilford Gallerie smooth pearl paper. It has a nice weight and suits the printer. For matte prints the Epson papers- especially archival matte, are hard to fault.

Being ultra picky the black and white results could perhaps be improved with a colour profile, but for most people including pros, the results are fine.

If you are considering buying a printer, ignore this at your peril.

Aug 17, 2005

PelaoOfflineImage Upload: Off

Registered: Jan 8, 2005Location: CanadaPosts: 112

Review Date: Aug 10, 2005

Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9

Pros:

Well built. Very quiet. Good speed. Print quality with Premium Glossy, Premium Luster and Enhance Matte papers is outstanding.

Cons:

None significant - I am happy with my purchase.

I researched very carefully before purchasing the R800. In the end it came to this one or the Canon Pixma 8500. I chose the Epson because: sample prints looked more natural, print longevity is better and Epson offer a wider range of papers.